1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of computer-mediated group communication systems.
2. Background
Groups of people have communicated together for eons. This communication includes styles where a group of people listen to a presenter as well as styles where people collaborate in a social interaction such as a meeting (among other styles). In the following description, the term meeting is intended to include all social interactions. Meetings often have subgroups of people who carry on separate conversations within the context of the meeting. Each of these subgroups maintains a conversational floor for that subgroup while the members of the subgroup maintain awareness of the primary group conversation. The primary group conversation generally continues even though separate conversational floors are established. While this conversational style works well when the number of participants is small and all of the participants are co-located (such as in a conference room), it is completely disruptive using existing technology that enables remote parties to communicate with each other (for example, teleconference technology, two-way shared radio channels, etc.).
An example of this problem is that of a “party line” telephone or teleconference call in which there is no capability to schism the conversation into separate conversational floors. This is also true of shared-channel radio systems such as police and fire-fighter radio communications. Communications between the participants are mixed together on the communication channel making it difficult for arbitrary users to communicate and often requiring complex protocols among the users to provide some order to the communications. Although some high-end teleconference systems support multiple conversational floors (for example, by “sub-conferencing” or by channel switching) the establishment and modification of these conversational floors is difficult. This difficulty lessens the spontaneity of establishing a conversational floor in a remote meeting.
Instant messaging and chat systems allow for schisming as a number of users can participate in a textual “chat room” where each user's typed message is displayed to all the members of the room (subject to per-member controls). Each user can also explicitly create and maintain a side-channel textual conversation with a subgroup of members. This schisming is not automatic but requires that explicit user commands be made to the system.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,567 B 1 to Willehadson et al., entitled Method and System for Providing Spatialized Audio in Conference Calls, and filed Feb. 10, 1999 teaches a mechanism that allows sub-conferences (conversational floors). However, each user needs to manually enter a dialog with a command unit (by DTMF, by a user interface with a control unit or by a recognized voice command) to initiate or participate in a sub-conference or to switch between sub-conferences. In addition, Willehadson uses a complicated spatialization technique to indicate what sub-conferences are available. Willehadson does not teach automatic detection of conversational floors or automatic switching between conversational floors responsive to the conversational characteristics related to the conversations.
It would be advantageous to provide a capability that addresses the above-mentioned problems.